A warm welcome
I have looked at the options for sharing paid insight for a while, without shutting myself off or trying to hand-crank a new platform. Substack appears to be the place.
I hope you’ll join us and benefit from my years of experience and (alleged) expertise.
I will offer a weekly read on what’s really happening in store and on shelf, joining up strategy, what the retailer says it is going to do, with reality, what the customer actually experiences.
Every week my team and I walk the aisles and capture what is going on. You can get so much from the shelf edge, at the sharp end, where customers are adjudicating both retailer and brand.
Stores, fixtures, products and standards, photographed as we find them.
We have 1.2 million images now. Some good, some bad.
We are also moving aggressively into the AI space. We are able to deploy Cartwright, our retail AI, to look at every image for share of shelf, pricing, seasonal ranges and what has moved or changed from last time.
He has been trained on 39,000 of my emails, 99,000 tweets and thousands of reports.
What you get is the market as it actually looks to customers, not as a deck or strategy says it should.
No desk research.
No second-hand data.
The same pairs of eyes every week, written in the same voice.
Who’s writing
I’m Steve Dresser. For 17 years I’ve walked stores for the people who run them, from CEOs and buyers to brand owners and investors. Thousands of reports, hundreds of clients.
What people I have worked with say:
▎ “His deep understanding of the market, what’s happening now and, more importantly, what’s about to happen, is second to none.” Dalton Philips, CEO, Greencore
▎ “One of the best retail operators I’ve ever come across. A true force to be reckoned with.” Stuart Machin, CEO, M&S
▎ “His no-nonsense approach helped anchor our discussions and provided retail expertise without the overhead of large consultancy firms.” David Potts CBE, former CEO Morrisons and Tesco board member
▎ “The team at Channel Islands Co-op benefitted immensely from working with Steve and the team at Grocery Insight.” Mark Cox, CEO, Channel Islands Co-op
What you get:
Free subscribers get the weekly headlines across 9+ grocers, a taste of the store-walk photography, and the odd full issue on the house.
Paid subscribers get the full weekly read.
Every retailer, the detail, the annotated shelf photography, the share of shelf and pricing charts, my take on what it means, and the whole archive.
Reply to any email and it comes straight to me.
We will also start to add podcasts, video and other content in time.
This platform gives me the flexibility to do that. We previously ran subscriber-only content on Mailchimp and Circle, but those proved inflexible.
Manager’s Special, until 30 June
To reflect the fact that so many of you are long-term contacts or friends, and have helped me in some way down the years, I want to reward that.
So subscribe now and lock in 40% off for life.
That is £120 a year instead of £200, for as long as you stay subscribed.
Just £10 a month.
After 30 June it goes to full price, and early subscribers keep their rate for good.
Take advantage of the Manager’s Special today - Offer ends June 30.
There is no better value subscription out there.*
*Actually, there is! Become a Keyholder, our exclusive tier priced at £300 a year. You get video analysis and monthly and quarterly deep dives into retailer and market performance.
